I told my 5-year-old son recently that he was about as old as the iPhone.

His eyes widened in shock and despair. “But Mom!” he exclaimed. “What did you do without your phone?”

What did I do without my phone, son? I actually got work done! Like most people, I purchased my first smartphone as a means to increase productivity and for a long time, it really did help. I worked as a social media manager for a large online parenting publication at the time, and I needed to have access to Facebook and Twitter 24-hours a day.

That was the gateway to the giant time suck that is mobility. While that gig is well in the past, my iPhone remains. As I move through the cycles of my professional life I find that the more I use it, the less I actually get done.

Here’s the hack you’ve been waiting for—I took every email account except my personal account off my iPhone. That’s right, no one I work for or with can reach me when I’m away from my laptop unless they call me, text me or email me at my private email address.

It’s counter-intuitive, but removing my work email from my smartphone makes me a lot more productive. In the past, I may have replied to an email on the fly, only to forget about it later and miss a deadline or some other important task.

Now when I’m answering email, I’m in work mode—not at the playground, the swimming pool or the doctor’s office. I also know that if I get a call or a text, it really is urgent. Folks tend to communicate that way only when they really need my attention at that exact moment. This helps me to be a better parent and partner, as well. When it’s kid/family/couple time, I’m more focused on what’s happening in front of me.

This hack doesn’t work great if your personal and professional email accounts are the same, so I urge you to consider separating them. It makes for a much more organized (and balanced) work life. If you are working for a large organization, don’t be afraid to ask for an internal email address. Sometimes they balk, but I’ve found more often than not it’s pretty easy to get one. Otherwise, get yourself a second free email account and dedicate it to professional communication only.

There are definite downsides to working for yourself, and one of them is that you don’t get the same kind of benefits as a salaried employee—no sick days, no co-funded health insurance and no paid vacation time.

For a long (long long long) time I brought my work with me whenever we traveled for any reason. Christmas break? I worked. Spring break? I worked. Summer break? I worked while the beach beckoned.

When you work 12 hours a day, 365 days of the year (remind me to tell you about the time I took an edit test on Christmas Day), you start to look like this:

I finally broke this habit when my kids and I went to Walt Disney World with my mother in 2011. I was forewarned that getting a good signal on my smartphone at the park would be impossible and that I’d be way too tired after spending the day playing in the various parks to work in the evenings.

I thought long and hard about it, and I left my laptop at home. I told all my clients I would be unreachable. And then, I proceeded to have the time of my life with my two children, who so often get the short end of the stick when I’m working. Let’s just say I should have the words, “In a second,” tattooed on my forehead.

It’s true that when I don’t work, I don’t get paid. My clients don’t take kindly to paying me when I’m off hanging out with Mickey or at the beach in July. But for my own mental health and that of my family, I absolutely had to start taking the time for some r-and-r.

Now, I look at my calendar at the start of each year and plan for time off. I take off two weeks at the holidays, two weeks in the summer and one week at spring break—that’s five weeks off, which is roughly the same amount of vacation time I had when I was working full-time on-site for a large corporation.

I figure those breaks into my hourly rate, look at the client list I’m dealing with for that year and make any adjustments necessary (tighten the household budget during those months, take extra work beforehand to make up for it and bank those payments, increase the rate for certain projects).

Then I take the darn time off—without stressing about it.

Sometimes you can’t plan for days you need to take off. Maybe the kids are sick, or maybe the polar vortex decides to act like a big bully and you end up with six snow days in January. The great thing about working at home on your own time is that your clients don’t usually care when you work, as long as you show up for meetings and hit your deadlines. There were a few days this year when I spent the afternoon making cupcakes and drinking hot chocolate and made up my work time in the evenings.

It seems scary to give yourself time off. When you ask your boss for a vacation, it feels easier because someone else is giving you permission. I’m here to tell you—if you want a healthy, thriving career, you need to be a healthy, thriving you. And that means taking a vacation now and then.

Lately I find people who are interested in entrepreneurship peppering me with questions about how they can get started, what kind of fees to charge and whether or not they need to form an LLC, otherwise known as a limited liability corporation.

This year I made enough dough to feel the pain at tax time, so creating an LLC is definitely on my mind—it can offer some benefits when the taxman comes calling. But I don’t know much about LLCs, what they mean or how to create one, so I reached out to another self-employed professional woman from my social network, Mayzie Brown. Brown is a Certified Public Accountant and spent seven years as an auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. These days, she’s running her own business in Colorado, helping people (like me!) with their accounting needs. Here’s what she had to say about when, how and why to form an LLC when you work for yourself.

What is an LLC, anyways? And how much do they cost?

An LLC is a company that provides limited liability to its owners throughout most of the country. Though this type of company does enable it’s owners to enjoy limited liability like owners of a corporation would, it is not a corporation. Additionally, this type of company has the option to pass through profits to the owners to be taxed at the lower individual rate. LLCs can have as few as one owner – there is no limit on the number of owners. LLCs can file taxes as a Sole-Proprietor (also known as a single-member LLC), an S-Corporation, or a Partnership

The cost of creating an LLC depends on what state you wish to create it in. In my home state of Colorado, someone doing all of the paperwork themselves will pay $50. I charge $250 – $50 for the filing fee and $200 to complete the paperwork (this includes the application to the state and the IRS for tax ID numbers).

Why would someone who is self-employed create an LLC?

There are normally three reasons for self-employed person to create an LLC:

The limited liability coverage: This means, that as long as personal and business funds are not co-mingled, only the assets and equity in the company are at stake, not your personal assets. By not creating an LLC, if you were to make a mistake and have a judgment charged against you, all personal assets are at risk of being taken away.

The option to be taxed as a Flow-Through entity (ie – an S-Corporation or a Partnership): By choosing to be a Flow-Through entity, as opposed to a Corporation (also referred to as a C-Corporation), you only get taxed once on your income. This is sometimes a hard concept to understand, but as a C-Corporation, any profit remaining after deductible expenses is taxed at the Corporate rate, which is 35%. Then, any disbursements from that profit to the owners of the company are considered dividends. The normal dividend rate is 15%. Therefore, you are essentially paying 50% tax on all profits withdrawn from the company

As a Flow-Through entity, any profit remaining after deductible expenses is taxed at the individual income tax rate (this can vary depending on whatever other income you may have, but it’s almost always less than the corporation rate, and is definitely less than the combined 50% rate after withdrawing dividends from a C-Corporation). Since you, as an individual, have already been taxed on the income of the corporation, any profits withdrawn are done so tax-free.

The ability to take a pay check and have taxes withheld throughout the year: A lot of the time the biggest problem self-employed people come across is their tax bill. The reason for this is the fact that these individuals are subject to Self-Employment Tax, in addition to the regular income tax, on their business profits. By choosing an LLC, these individuals now have the option to form one of the Flow-Through entities discussed above. When this happens, the self-employed individual then becomes an employee of the entity and can take a pay check, having taxes withheld from the check.

This makes tax time a lot easier because you’ve already been paying a good chunk of your bill throughout the year. Also, the pay check a self-employed individual takes from the LLC is a deductible expense – thereby reducing your flow-through profit, which reduces the income taxes owed on that amount. Additionally, if you’re able to live off of less than what your self-employment income is (prior to forming an LLC that’s taxed as a Flow-Through entity), then you can reduce the amount you decide to take as a pay check. This will leave you with a higher flow-through profit. However, you are now able to take lump-sum distributions from the LLCs profits – avoiding the amount you would normally have paid in Self-Employment tax.

Is there an income “threshold” where an LLC starts to make sense?

There are no income thresholds for forming an LLC. If you’re concerned about the possibility of losing personal assets because of an error made professionally, it is in your best interest to create an LLC.

Does having an LLC change the way my clients pay me, and how I distribute income to myself?

Yes – to both questions. Your clients would now need to pay your LLC (and the EIN associated with that). So, payments would no longer go to Amy Hatch, they’d now go to Amy Hatch’s LLC Name and would be deposited into the business bank account set up for the LLC. As mentioned above, you would need to have the LLC give you a pay check, so that would definitely change how you distribute income to yourself.

What happens if I moved to a new state? Do I need to create a new LLC?

Not necessarily. Each state has different rules pertaining to LLCs – check with state to determine if a new LLC is required. In regards to your Federal Return – it doesn’t matter where the LLC was created compared to where you live now.

Bottom line: Is an LLC a smart business decision?

Personally, I see no reason why you wouldn’t create an LLC – it doesn’t cost much to do and it provides an extra layer of protection. Additionally, you have many more options on how you’d like to be taxed.

“Oh, that’s so nice! You must have so much more time to do other things!”

Um, yeah, not so much. It’s tempting to believe I have a super-flexible schedule, but that kind of thinking can get me in trouble. In other words, I still have an actual schedule I need to work around, even if it’s a schedule of my own making.

And, to be honest, working in my house is distracting. I’m a bit like a cat with shiny things: Oh, there’s the laundry! I can fold it now and save time later!

Two hours later my kids’ drawers are full of clean clothes and I missed a deadline.

Seriously, it happens! I’m surrounded by a three-dimensional to-do list in the form of my living space. There’s always something I can be doing, if you know what I mean. Add those pesky work deliverables to my pile and pretty soon I’m buried.

Let’s not even talk about the time-suck that is the Internet. Did you know that a seller on Etsy makes armor for your cat in the form of a dragon? I won’t tell you how I know that, but suffice to say it’s 15 minutes of my work-life I’ll never get back.

I struggle with organization but as a self-employed worker I have to have my act together. Technology is a wonderful thing when it isn’t distracting you with homemade cat armor, and here are three apps I use to keep me honest (and on task) during my work day.

1. Evernote. Evernote comes in a free and a paid version, and for a long time I used the free app. It lets you create to-do lists, clip items from the Internet to read later, add tasks and appointments to your calendar and so much more. It can live on both your laptop and your smartphone, so you always have it with you. I even use it to keep a running grocery list and weekly menu. If you still love paper (and I do), it also works in concert with a special Moleskine notebook. Seriously, this app is my lifesaver.

2. Desktop Task Timer.A few years ago I was juggling multiple clients and billing each of them hourly. It was a nightmare to keep track of who needed to be invoiced for what, and at which rate. I searched the app store for something that would help and happened on Desktop Task Timer. This is a simple desktop timer that lets me add multiple tasks — and the price per hour. I was surprised to see how much time I wasted! Now, this nifty timer keeps me on task and helps me when it’s time to bill my clients, too. Desktop Task Time is only 99 cents!

3. Freedom. You may have heard of some famous folks who rely on Freedom protect them from the siren song of BuzzFeed, including author Dave Eggers and the folks at “O: The Oprah Magazine.” At $10, this may seem pricey but Freedom prevents you from accessing the Internet for specified amounts of time. For me, it makes financial sense. My productivity is worth $65 to $100 an hour, depending on the project I’m working on. I’ll happily pay a one-time fee of $10 to keep myself on task–and I’ll use the time I didn’t spend looking at your Facebook page to volunteer in my kids’ classrooms.

Step 1: Explore Recipes

Every Saturday morning after the boys have finished hockey and their music practice, I sit down with my computer, open up Pinterest and Food Gawker and troll for dishes that sound good, fit our budget, and are do-able in under 30 minutes.

Step 2: Copy Links & Ingredients to My Menu Printable

When I find a recipe that will work, I simply copy and paste the link to the recipe right into the day section of the form. While I have the recipe open, I copy and paste the ingredients right into the appropriate section of the grocery list, too.

Step 3: Save the Menu for Future Reference

Once my menu and shopping list are complete, I save the PDF in a file folder titled “Weekly Menus” and add the date to the name. I have gone back and re-used “old” menus or the best recipes from old menus many, many times.

Step 4: Print & Shop

Once everything has been saved, I print it off, rip off the shopping list, pin the menu to our family whiteboard on the fridge and head with the shopping list to the grocery store.

Step 5: Open Recipe & Cook

Each evening, I glance at the menu attached to our fridge and open up the recipe link in my browser or on our iPad and get to cooking. If I’m not home, it is very easy for my husband to do the same — or a babysitter. Anyone can cook with the full confidence that we have all of the ingredients needed.

Step 6: Add Printed Menu to a Binder

If the week has been particularly successful – with multiple recipes that people like, I will three hole punch the sheet, jot the date at the top, and add it to a basic, white 3-ring binder I keep in the kitchen for future reference. If the week has been full of “meh” recipes, I skip this step.

Until now we’ve kept this printable behind a gated wall exclusively for Boot Camp participants. But the drumbeat for an interactive menu planner has been getting louder and louder lately. In fact it’s gotten SO loud that we’re finally making it available for a single purchase. You can get the menu planning printable here.

What’s your favorite meal planning tool?

]]>http://getbuttonedup.com/2014/02/11/new-interactive-printable-for-menu-planning/feed/13 ways to live in the present and avoid the ‘what-ifs’ when you’re self-employedhttp://getbuttonedup.com/2014/02/10/3-ways-to-live-in-the-present-and-avoid-the-what-ifs-when-youre-self-employed/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=3-ways-to-live-in-the-present-and-avoid-the-what-ifs-when-youre-self-employed
http://getbuttonedup.com/2014/02/10/3-ways-to-live-in-the-present-and-avoid-the-what-ifs-when-youre-self-employed/#commentsTue, 11 Feb 2014 01:28:02 +0000http://getbuttonedup.com/?p=25822

When my first child was born in 2004, I had a great job at a Fortune 100 company as a marketing manager, but after my generous, three-month maternity leave ended, I found myself weeping at my desk and longing to be with my daughter.

I started to work again on a freelance basis when my kid was about 2 years old. It was slow going at first but for the past four years, I’ve been working almost full-time from home while also raising my family. Freelancing isn’t a simple proposition, though, and it takes a lot of emotional work to stay grounded and happy when you’re self-employed. It’s easy for your work to bleed into every hour of your day, and it’s easy to let the inherent instability infect your overall attitude.

This month I’ve had a lot of instability. I took a big risk (also kind of a big no-no for the self-employed) and whittled my client base down to one almost full-time contract. I let go of my bread-and-butter work in the parent-blogger world and that leaves me feeling very insecure. I also traveled a lot, something that the introvert in me hates. I’m one of those people who needs time to recover after intense social interactions.

It would be really easy for me to slip into an abyss of discontentment and fear right now. However, that kind of negative thinking not only takes away from the quality of my work, it spills over into my life. I yell at my kids, ignore my spouse, bury myself in LinkedIn mining for gigs…it’s not pretty.

In 2014, I vowed I would avoid this common freelance pitfall. So, when I’m teetering on the edge, I try to do three things:

1. Get off my duff and get out of the house. When you work from home and all your interactions take place over the phone and the screen, it’s easy to get demoralized. Even an introvert like me needs fresh air and the sound of other voices sometimes! I get my tush to the local coffee shop when I start to feel my walls closing in. It’s amazing how productive (and positive) I feel just from a change in my environment.

2. Institute the ‘After-Eight’ rule. Once our kids go to bed at 8 p.m., it’s time to turn the screens off. My husband and I have a rule that, unless it’s really necessary, we don’t work or interact with our laptops and other wireless devices after 8 p.m. It means we actually talk to one another and connect in the ways that brought us together in the first place. It sounds simple, but it really helps.

3. Keep my network alive. Over the years I’ve been lucky to build up a very supportive network of friends and professional contacts in my industry. When I get stressed out about client relationships or other bumps in my career road, I reach out and just say hi to some of the folks I’ve met along the way. We swap tips, leads and generally gossip about what’s happening in our work worlds. I can’t recommend this enough. Every good gig I’ve gotten has come courtesy of my network.

Right around the end of January, just as the novelty of “reinventing” myself is wearing thin, my bad habits rear their ugly heads.

It’s like they know — January 30th (or so) is the perfect time to drag me back to the sad, sniveling collection of tics and autopilot loops that was “me” prior to January 1st.

Take yesterday, for instance. At breakfast our blender was silent for the first time in 28 days. I felt a pang of guilt seeing it sitting there all kale-less and apple-free on the counter. It scowled at me as I poured a heaping bowl of Cinnamon Harvest and shoved a spoonful in my mouth.

Ugh.

My thinking brain and my body knew they were supposed to be doing something different, but their cries were muffled. I was mentally underwater, unable to pivot. Stuffing my face with cereal I didn’t even want.

Even though it might feel like it in the moment, sliding back into a bad habit is not a sign of a deficient personality.

And I’m not just saying that because I do it with alarming regularity.

The reality is, habits — good and bad — form familiar neural pathways in our brains. While creating a “new” pathway is definitely possible, it will take many, many, many repetitions for the new habit to become more dominant than the existing one.

So, all the while you are diligently working on instilling your new habit, routines stored in your basal ganglia can be triggered to run the old (bad) habit at any time. In my case an old cereal-eating habit was triggered by the cue of walking downstairs and into the kitchen first thing in the morning.

When that happens, the key is not to go all black and white and label your trip up as “a FAILURE” (or worse yourself as a failure).

You had some neurons fire on autopilot before your “executive function” could step in. That is all.

The key to success is to recognize what’s gone on in your brain and then figure out which of these 8 tactics you should work on to keep your basal ganglia from running that old/bad routine again.

1. Get to threshold

The reason your brain runs the old pattern is that it learned (early on) that the behavior was rewarding in some way. For example, I got in to the cereal habit as a swimmer. As a teen, I’d come home ravenous after a 2-hour early morning practice and within seconds would have both a happy tummy & satiated sweet tooth thanks to the ready to eat cereal boxes in the cabinet & cold milk in the fridge. Happy tummy + satiated sweet tooth = dopamine squirt. Enough of those dopamine squirts and my smart brain linked up the cue “walking into the kitchen in the morning” to the action “pouring a bowl of cereal” so that it just happened without me thinking about it.

Great at 18 when I swam 4 hours a day and ran cross country to boot. Fine at 30 when I was training for marathons. Bad, bad, bad at 41 when my main activities are childcare, cooking, and digital entrepreneurship.

The interesting thing though is that it IS possible to reframe what the bad thing means to you. All you have to do is start to associate bad things to the behavior. For example, with my cereal habit, I think about the glycemic index of cereal. Then I picture my sugar levels spiking after eating a spoonful of cereal. Then I picture the inflammation inside my body caused by the insulin spike. I also pinch my middle and say the word, “cereal.” And so forth.

The thing is, it works really well as a re-motivator. And although I don’t know of any scientific studies proving this, it might just help your brain “unlearn” the habit.

So if you find yourself running a bad habit loop, take a beat if you can (or reflect after) to bombard your brain with the negative attributes of the habit. Really picture yourself doing the thing and then that action triggering an avalanche of BAD things. Rinse & repeat as often as you can when you’re trying to overcome it.

2. Be mindful.

When you slip up, get really granular about your behavior. Try to break down your habituated routine into three parts: the cue or trigger, the routine, and the reward you are getting. The more you can observe objectively it as a process, the more you will be able to think “scientifically” and creatively about how to change it.

3. Have an IF/THEN plan.

I’ve written about the power of if/than statements before. They act as primers for your brain, telling it what to do when it encounters a certain context. These are a really helpful tool for keeping your brain on track when it’s likely to go off-course. They can be used to tell your brain what to do to avoid the bad behavior all together OR to course-correct a brain on autopilot.

So, continuing my cereal example, my “IF/THEN” statements could be:
– IF I find myself mindlessly pouring a bowl of cereal first thing in the morning, THEN I will pour the cereal back into the box, walk to the fridge, take out my kale, apple, and lemons and start making a green monster instead.

– IF it is a weekday, then as soon as I wake up, I will walk downstairs and make myself a green monster shake for breakfast first thing.

In my experience, the key with these if/than statements is to repeat them often, sort of like a mantra. When you get to the point of having an automatic response your statement, you’re in business.

4. Eliminate as many triggers as possible.

Obviously, this will be easier for some habits than others. But if you can get rid of the triggers that keep you stuck in old routines, do it.

If you eat cookies when they’re in the house, toss them. Ditto for cereal. If you are tempted to read Gawker instead of doing productive work on your computer, make it impossible to do so with the use of Freedom or Get Concentrating.

Of course, things get complicated when you have others in the house that have conflicting needs. I can’t toss the cookies OR the cereal as my kids and husband would revolt. But I can change up how they are stored in a way that muffles the trigger for me. For example, I could put them in a brightly colored plastic bin with “FOR THE KIDS” in my pantry. Perhaps seeing them designated as “not for me” might remove the trigger.

Think about ways to remove or muffle the triggers that trip you up. Get creative — there is always more than one way to skin a cat.

5. Lock yourself in so that NOT breaking the habit will be more painful than breaking the habit.

Odysseus knew he’d encounter the sirens. He knew that upon hearing them he’d want to untie himself from the mast and dive to his death to reach them. So he instructed his crew to fill their ears with wax so they could not hear the sirens and to ignore his entreaties to be set free until the ship was well past the treacherous “siren-zone.”

Research has shown that the more you pre commit — or lock yourself in to a certain course of action before you have to act — the more likely you are to stick with the program.

If you find yourself falling back into old patterns frequently, lock yourself in like Odysseus. Put money on the table. Put your honor at stake. Whatever it takes so that it is either impossible, darn near impossible, or downright humiliating to go astray.

6. Reward yourself each time you do the right thing.

Give your brain a reason to keep doing the new, better thing. It likes rewards because they help it determine which routines are worth learning and ultimately routinizing. To that end, be sure you’re giving yourself a good squirt of dopamine when you make the right decision.

I personally do a little happy dance around the kitchen when I have my breakfast smoothie in hand and revel in the boost to my self esteem. When I get to 30 days in a row on March 1st, I will be marching my (slim) behind down to the local manicure/pedicure spot to celebrate. When I get to 60 consecutive days, I’m going to spurge on some new jeans. At 90 days? Why, I’ll be getting a fancy haircut & color of course!

If you can’t figure out how to reward yourself, here are 101 fun ideas.

7. Stop defining slip-ups as failures.

Last but definitely not least is to take the word “failure” out of the equation where new habits are concerned. What you believe about an event will determine what you do next. If you believe a slip indicates you’re a failure and are incapable of change, you won’t take the corrective steps you need to, and sure enough, you’ll prove to yourself you’re a failure at making the change.

The only thing a slide back into old habits means is that your brain has some well worn grooves and getting it to move beyond those grooves will take effort.

This one is harder to do in reality – I certainly didn’t ever realize how quick I was to judge myself as a total failure. But once you make the shift, the difference in your ability to course correct is massive.

Have you noticed yourself slipping up on your resolutions this week? What do you do to get yourself back on track.

Be honest. Are you procrastinating on these kinds of things right now? (It’s okay – we all do it from time to time).

Procrastination torpedoes productivity, harms your self-esteem and is the source of massive amounts of stress. So why do we I do it and why, oh why, is it so hard to overcome?

As a writer, procrastination is part of my daily equation.

“Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.” — Gene Fowler

Perhaps that’s why I love laundry so much. It’s the perfect, bite-sized diversion from the tyranny of a blank page. Plus it makes me feel productive.

Regardless of what you do, procrastination haunts most of us.

Social scientist, professor and author of the marvelous book The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel, PhD, explains that procrastination occurs when our logical planning brain, the prefrontal cortex, has made an intention to do something in the future (say, make a menu for the week or get a head start on handmade Holiday gifts) but that plan gets overridden by our more powerful, impulsive and emotional brain, the limbic system, because it has a competing desire (say, the latest reunion episode of New Jersey Housewives).

Given the strength of the emotional brain, it’s worth having a few tricks up your sleeve to hold your impulses at bay. In that spirit, I’ve pulled together eight effective strategies for avoiding procrastination.

There's nothing like a "ding" from your phone to distract you from what you need to be doing. Do yourself a favor and turn off those distracting alarms. Your productivity will skyrocket

Messy desks and rooms offer a compelling distraction. Set up a routine, a set time and day once a week, to give your environment a clean-sweep. The less mess you have around you, the greater the chances you will be able to concentrate.

Place a physical “impulse interrupter” on procrastination devices, like TVs and game consoles. For example, a photo box or book on top of the TV to represent the photo project you need to complete.

In many instances our brains overestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task. Set your egg timer or the timer on your smart phone for a specific amount of time, and see if you can “beat the clock.” The timer increases the urgency you feel to get the work done.

Shallow breathing and/or holding your breath, both of which people are likely to do when watching TV or while hunched over a computer, triggers your body’s fight or flight reflex and effectively shuts down your prefrontal cortex. To put your long-term planning brain back in business, take a few minutes and do some breathing exercises like 4-in, 7-out, 8-in.

Sometimes you simply need someone you can call when you are having a weak moment. Ask a conscientious friend or family member if you can call them when you feel yourself heading down procrastination highway or before you start to work on a big, important task. The act of reaching out itself actually puts a stop to your procrastination doom-loop and the ensuing quick pep talk is likely to increase your motivation levels – both of which increase your chances of being productive.

Emerging research shows that simple if-then statements are very effective at helping you follow through on your good intentions. For example, if you have to get a writing project done, create a statement that says, “If I find myself procrastinating by ___(pick your most frequent poison), then I will stand up, do a series of deep breathing exercises and turn my attention to ___ (the task I was putting off). Repeat it to yourself out loud on a regular basis.

What are you procrastinating right now & and what do you procrastinate most often?

And it probably isn’t harmless. All of those emails are likely impacting your ability to focus. According to a recent study conducted by the beautiful minds at Princeton’s Neuroscience Institute, when there are multiple stimuli competing for your attention, it limits your brain’s ability to focus and process information.

Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.

The nuclear arms race of academics and extracurriculars is not imaginary.

At least in our neck of the woods (the suburbs of New York City), kindergarteners are now expected to understand what was once first grade material. In turn, that has ratcheted up the pressure on preschools to prepare them properly.

I have listened with clenched jaw to many good friends as they rant about the staff of various preschools (all fabulous) for failing to adequately prepare their kids for kindergarten. I have watched with a knot in my stomach as my sons’ friends get scheduled within an inch of their lives at age 4 and 5. Topping the list these days are: competitive sports programs, arts programs, and yes, even academic tutoring programs.

I mention my clenched jaw because it takes an enormous amount of effort to refrain from joining this rat race. It is hard not to worry that I am somehow cheating my children by “opting out” on their behalf. At least right now.

The desire that drives parents to push their young, young children academically and otherwise is primal. We all want our kids to thrive. And so we invest in the activities and tutoring programs that appear on the surface to help give them a leg up academically and socially.

Unfortunately the research shows the academic push-down and chronic over-scheduling is counterproductive.

First of all, from an academic standpoint, the brains of small children are not necessarily ready to grasp more abstract academic concepts. While they may be able to “perform,” their brains are not necessarily comprehending or learning. Is that what we really want? Consider this:

“A crucial shift in children’s cognitive skills occurs at around age six. Although the cognitive changes that occur during infancy and the preschool years are dramatic (as children learn their native language, for instance), almost all theories of development point to age six as the time when children begin to actually “reason” in the commonsense meaning of the word.” — Jacquelynne S. Eccles, Ph.D., via http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/09_02_02.pdf

Additional research shows that children’s developmental schedule hasn’t changed in the past 70 years. So we can push academics down all we want, but that doesn’t mean our kids are ever going to be ready for it.

And because they aren’t developmentally ready for it, it’s hurting them. Experts have noted a jump in negative attitudes about school and a dramatic increase in feelings of failure among preschool aged children, which makes me want to weep.

I saw this in my own son when he was labeled “slow” at the start of kindergarten because he was not developmentally ready to read. He got his sea legs by the middle of the year and has gone on to thrive. But I had to work hard to protect him from the judgement and fear that was rampant in the school system – and the push to invest in a tutor. (It also gave me a new appreciation for why parents choose to red-shirt their kids. I absolutely would have done the same had I known then what I know now.)

In addition to the push-down, all of the relentless scheduling robs our kids of the most essential building block to learning: play.

The director of our boys’ preschool says it well, “Kids need time to play – without rules or structure or supervision. Play IS their work. Through play, they learn how to communicate, problem solve, count, share, and generally make sense of the world around them.”

Ironically, if the arms race is in full-swing in your town, taking your foot off the gas will require proactive organization on your part. If you don’t have alternative plans in place, it is far, far too easy to get swept up in the mania.

Here are 8 ways to opt out of the arms race gracefully

1. Read up on the topic.
There are many great academic studies about children’s need for unstructured play. The more you dig in to the topic, the easier it will be down the line to resist the urge to over schedule and academically groom your young child.

2. Talk it over with your spouse.
Both parents do need to be on the same page where this is concerned and speak with one voice, to schools & teachers, to friends & family, and to your children.

3. Set a household policy.
Limit your preschool- 3rd grade child to one or two structured activities beyond school per season (that translates to 1 or 2 per week). Instituting rules or guidelines can make it a lot easier to say no.

4. If asked about signing your child up for something, beg for time.
Swap your “yes, that sounds great” for “that sounds really interesting; let me think about [child’s schedule] and get back to you with an answer.” Then use the time to determine whether or not it really is in the best interest of your child to sign them up.

5. Script Some “No” Responses
Sometimes it’s easier to have a canned response to friendly peer pressure to join x,y,z activity than to figure out how to respond appropriately in the moment.

6. Communicate your point of view with your child’s teachers.
Use the first parent-teacher conference of the year to discuss your expectations with the teachers. Let them know your primary goal. For example, we always emphasize our desire for our preschooler is to teach them to love learning, discovering, exploring and relating to others. ABC’s are nice, but not necessary.

7. Make your house a go-to play zone.
Once you know your child’s schedule, send an email out to all of your friends letting them know your house is always open for play dates on XYZ days/times. We’ve found that make it much more likely your child will have plenty of playmates if you live in an area where kids cannot just “go out and play.”

8. Hit the playground often.
It offers the benefits of “go out and play” in a world where just going out to play isn’t supported.

Do you fear the academic arms race? Do you see it in your preschool or early grammar schools? What do you do, if anything, to “opt-out”?